HONG KONG – Gregory Charles Rivers, an Australian actor who made his name acting in Hong Kong TVB dramas and jokingly referred to himself as TVB’s “token Caucasian”, has died. He was 58.
According to Hong Kong news reports, Rivers was found unconscious and unresponsive in a room of a Tai Au Mun Village house in Clear Water Bay on Feb 2. The police confirmed his death upon arrival at the scene.
Rivers, who also went by the Cantonese stage name Ho Kwok Wing, was born in 1965 in Gympie, Australia.
In a 2016 interview with Australia’s ABC News, Rivers recalled that while studying medicine at the University of New South Wales in the 1980s, he met some students from Hong Kong who introduced him to Cantopop. It inspired him to give up his studies and move to Hong Kong in 1988 in the hope of starting a career in entertainment.
Rivers had previously worked as a driver for Cantopop superstar Alan Tam during one of his concerts in Sydney in 1986.
A few years later, a chance encounter with some of Tam’s band members in Hong Kong gave Rivers the opportunity to sing at two of Tam’s shows.
Rivers found a job teaching English, and was later told that TVB was looking for a Caucasian who spoke Cantonese for a television series. He auditioned for the role and got the part even though he admits that “my acting was terrible, and my Cantonese was terrible”.
“The audition was really bad, but they didn’t have a second choice,” he said in the ABC News interview. “I ended up being TVB’s token Caucasian for 20 years straight.”
After making his TVB debut in 1988’s Twilight Of A Nation, Rivers went on to appear in more than 200 dramas over the course of his 20-year stint with TVB, most of them as a stereotypical Caucasian character.
Rivers also did a short stint as an English coach for Hong Kong screen legend Chow Yun Fat in 2007. Rivers reportedly left TVB in 2008 after Chow encouraged him to branch into movies.
Some of Rivers’ recent films include the 2022 action thriller Man On The Edge, opposite Hong Kong actor Simon Yam. He also starred in Jackie Chan’s 2021 comedy All U Need Is Love. THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
